UN News stories

31 July 2015 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN special envoy on the Middle East have strongly condemned today's arson attack in the West Bank that killed a Palestinian child and left the child's parents severely injured.

26 July 2015 – Facing its most severe financial crisis ever, the United Nations agency tasked with assisting Palestine refugees throughout the Middle East has today convened an emergency session to weigh the growing risk that it may be forced to delay the start of the academic year in some 700 schools for half a million students across the region.

23 July 2015 – Welcoming the recent stated commitment by Israeli and Palestinian leaders to a peaceful solution to the region’s most enduring crisis, the United Nations special envoy on the Middle East told the Security Council today that such words need to be translated into “concrete and sustained actions on the ground.”

14 July 2015 – The United Nations human rights office today welcomed the recent release of a Palestinian prisoner who had been on a hunger strike protesting his continuing administrative detention by the Israeli authorities since 8 July 2014.

08 July 2015 – The root causes of last year's conflict in Gaza – which claimed nearly two thousand lives and ravaged large swathes of the Palestinian enclave – remain unaddressed despite a growing humanitarian crisis in the area, the head of the United Nations agency assisting Palestinian refugees has warned.

07 July 2015 – One year after the escalation of hostilities in Gaza, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Robert Piper, today expressed concern over the ongoing humanitarian situation and the slow pace of reconstruction there.

03 July 2015 – Increasingly concerned by the continued deadly incidents in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, against Israelis and Palestinians, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov today called for an immediate end to the violence.

29 June 2015 – The United Nations agency assisting Palestinian refugees across the Middle East announced today that it will begin reducing staff numbers in an effort to cut costs amid a wider budget shortfall facing the Organization's presence in the region.

24 June 2015 – During the past month, the security situation in the Middle East remained tense, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, today reported to the Security Council.

23 June 2015 – Syria’s “ever-accelerating” cycle of violence continues to reap civilian casualties and provoke “unspeakable suffering”, the head of a United Nations-mandated Commission of Inquiry warned today, as he lamented the international community’s inability to bring the country’s four-year war to a close.